Shortstraw release epic new music video shot in Japan

Cape Town – Shortstraw released their new music video for their single High School on Tuesday.

The video was shot while the band was on tour in Japan in October 2015. The video was shot by Tom Revington and directed by Russell Grant and Alastair Thomas, all Shortstraw members.

"This video is Russ' brainchild. He envisioned this badass Japanese schoolgirl just striding down a Japanese street and beating shit up as she went along. We then fleshed it out together to include some special effects and the band displaying some poor running form too!" says Alastair Thomas.

Shot in Osaka and Tokyo, the band had a day off on tour and decided to put it to good use and make a video. Fortunately their translator, Haruka, was super keen to get involved, and after she flipped off some queue jumpers at Universal Studios, they knew they had found their heroine. They scoured the neighbourhood called 'America' before they found the ideal road (about 4 blocks from Flake Records), and managed to find a trolley from a nearby music shop to use as dolly and tracks - they initially were using a minibus and shooting out the back, but the police told them they were not allowed to do that.

Whilst having loads of lost in translation moments as they tried to explain to the police and passers by what they were doing, they eventually got away with shooting the video. They were able to sneak in cameos from pretty much every friend of theirs in Japan, including Sawagi, Ai (their translator from 2014), Denims (another band they had toured with in Japan), Fabian (their sound engineer) and Dawa, who owns Flake Records, the label responsible for bringing them to Japan.

The video can be described as a mean-ass Japanese schoolgirl who goes on a vengeful rampage through the streets of Japan in search of that meddling band, Shortstraw. She destroys them with a guitar solo.

The animation in the video was done by Marco Belloni and Waldo Buchner. The band wanted the effects to be as Japanese as possible, so they got the two of them to go wild on it.

"The song is just a fun ode to some of the noisier bands we all love, so we figured the video had to be somewhat lighthearted, but also a little badass. The schoolgirl ties in with what the song's about - high school - and the fact that she kills us with a guitar solo is appropriate because the song probably has too many guitar solos - overkill!

"We love the video! It pays tribute to our time in Japan, which kinda kicked our ass, but we loved it more than anything too. It's also great to be able to feature all the people who were so kind to us when we were there. Getting them to try and act was a treat!"